YouTube says, “Our mission is for YOU to discover and shape the world through video.”

Well, I am no Roger Ebert, but this humble video watching columnist has been doing his part in this effort.

YouTube, as you all know, is the popular Internet site where folks can upload, share, and view videos.

Website Monitoring is the name of a business which  by way of contracted services for a monthly fee  monitors the status of websites.

One of the appealing benefits of this monitoring site is being able to obtain interesting facts and figures freely available on their web-blog.

In looking at the information collected about YouTube, I found some good stuff to share with my readers.

It all began Feb. 14 of 2005, when the original founders registered the domain name “youtube.com” and began working on their new website.

The very first video was uploaded to YouTube April 23 2005. This video was recorded by Yakov Lapitsky, who was one of the co-founders of YouTube. He uploaded a video about his visit to the San Diego Zoo. This video was 19 seconds in length and has been viewed more than 3.4 million times. It can be seen at this shortened link I created: http://tinyurl.com/poonr.

The official public launch of YouTube occurred in December 2005.

In July 2006, YouTube reached 100 million videos being viewed each day, along with 65,000 videos being uploaded per day to the site.

When Google acquired YouTube in October 2006, they paid $1.6 billion in Google stock.

As of last Tuesday, Google stock was trading at $492 a share.

Thankfully, Google didn’t change the name from YouTube to GooTube.

In July 2007, CNN and YouTube hosted a presidential debate among the candidates running for the office.

Citizens uploaded their video questions to YouTube, some were selected by CNN, and broadcast to the candidate and the nation.

More than 3,000 people posted their video questions on YouTube for the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate.

Thirty-nine of them were shown and commented on.

One of the more popular videos shown that night was the global warming video question asked by “Billiam the Snowman,” which was sent in by a couple of brothers from the great state of Minnesota.

To see the Billiam the Snowman YouTube video shown during the July 2007 debate, go to http://tinyurl.com/2zbbgw.

If you want to read more about the great YouTube Debate, look up my July 30, 2007 column: “YouTube takes center stage during debates.”

Getting back to some more interesting trivia about YouTube, we find the most popular YouTube video is “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga which has been played more than 264 million times.

In October 2007, the Queen of England began her own YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel. The message on this YouTube channel says “Welcome to The Royal Channel, the official channel of the British Monarchy.”

As of Aug. 17, there were 31,931 subscribers to the Queen of England’s channel.

the Vatican started a YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/vaticanit June 5 2008. On their YouTube channel, the Vatican says, “This channel offers informative coverage of the main activities of the Holy Father Benedict XVI and the Vatican’s most important events.”

As of last Tuesday, there were 5,043 subscribers on the Vatican YouTube channel.

YouTube is currently operating in 22 countries and in 24 different languages.

Currently, more than 2 billion videos are viewed on YouTube each day.

Every minute, 24 hours worth of video is uploaded to YouTube’s data servers.

The average user spends about 15 minutes a day on this online social networking video site.

Here is a good one  over the course of two months, more video content is uploaded to YouTube than all three major US network (ABC, CBS, and NBC) created video during the last 60 years.

The monitoring site reported the YouTube video player software is embedded in 10s of millions of websites, blogs and social networks (like Facebook and MySpace).

Hundreds of millions of YouTube videos are watched every month on mobile devices, too.

YouTube’s copyright content identification software program tool scans over 100 years worth of video every day.

YouTube’s own “fact sheet” states their user base typically ranges in the 18 to 55 age group, and is evenly divided between males and females. Fifty-one percent of all users visit YouTube weekly or more. Fifty-two percent of 18-to-34 year-olds regularly share YouTube videos with friends and colleagues.

Standard YouTube user account videos are limited to 15 minutes in length and a file size of 2 GB.

YouTube’s original headquarters was above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, CA.

YouTube’s current headquarters is located in San Bruno, CA.

To check out more interesting facts and figures about websites, go to the Website Monitoring Blog, located at http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog.

The YouTube Fact Sheet”can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/t/fact_sheet.